"Thank you, Peggy," she said. "You are the first person that I have ever met in my life that has cared for my soul." She walked on rapidly without another word, and Peggy stood staring after her. "Oh my! She is a nice lady. I do hopes she will be better soon." She was very interested a few days afterwards when she heard that the Miss Churchhills were going to call on Mrs. Webster's lodger, and she ventured to ask Helen when she came back if she had seen her. "Yes, I have, Peggy. I have discovered that my father knew her some years ago. She used to be one of his Sunday school teachers. Then she married, and has had a lot of trouble since. She has come into the country to recruit her health." Helen did not tell Peggy Mrs. Dale's history. It was a pitiable one. She was tempted to marry a man she did not love, for the sake of a home. Her husband proved to be an atheist and a drunkard; he led her a miserable life. Three out of her four children died in their infancy. Her only boy began to develop a taste for drink when he was only fourteen, and was expelled from two different schools. She took him abroad, and more to her relief than grief, he died of a rapid decline when he was seventeen. Then she came back to her husband, and had now only been a widow for a few months. She said to Helen very sadly— "My life seems finished, for all that makes life pleasant has gone from me. I have no belongings, no religion, no hope; I bury myself in books, but they are beginning to weary me." "There is never an end of anything," said Helen softly. "Life is made up of continual fresh beginnings, is it not?" "Ah, that is talk—a mere platitude," Mrs. Dale said a little impatiently. "I can never make a beginning." "But out of chaos God can." Helen could not resist this remark. Mrs. Dale looked at her. "I have lost my faith in God, and yet—" She moved across to her writing-desk, and placed a slip of paper in Helen's hand. It was Peggy's recipe. "You may smile at it," she said; "but this has brought back such an overwhelming charge of memories that I dare not say there is no God. I believe it is the production of a small maid of yours. Was it her own idea?" "Entirely," said Helen, looking at the paper, with a grave smile; "but there are great truths, Mrs. Dale, wrapped up in this small message." "There are," responded Mrs. Dale; and then she talked of other matters. "Peggy," said Helen to her sister afterwards, "is a real little home missionary. However queer her methods are, she has the two requisites for success—enthusiasm and perseverance." "Yes," said Joyce, "but we engaged her to be our little servant; we don't want her to be a missionary. However, I will say she shows both enthusiasm and perseverance in our service; her scrubbing can be heard half a mile off!" Spring slowly turned to summer, and when the fresh-cut hay lay about in the meadows a sad trouble came to Peggy.